New Child Health assessment forms | Supporting better outcomes for children in care
Today, CoramBAAF has published the updated Child Health assessment forms (2025). This group of forms includes both initial and review health assessment forms, and parental, maternal and neonatal health forms.
The aim of a health assessment is to provide a comprehensive picture of a child’s health needs, and to ensure these needs are met, including planning for the future and ultimately improving long term health outcomes. As children enter care, health assessments have a safeguarding function as they ensure health care is appropriate, timely and maintained.
The forms published under our licence scheme can be used by health and social care practitioners to support the process of completing the statutory health assessments for children in care. They are published for use in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Versions for Scotland will be available in 2026.
The documents have undergone a major revision, and include updated resources, to reflect current practice. For the first time the resources are designed to align with the new Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) quality standards for initial health assessments, due to be published in November 2025. The new RCPCH quality standards for initial health assessments provide the benchmark for practice, whilst the updated child health assessment forms and accompanying guidance are the practical tools to action the standards in practice.
For more information about which forms are included in our Child Health Suite, you can visit our help and support page.
The need for change
A performance driven tick box approach to this essential process can camouflage the complexities that are involved if services are to truly provide quality health plans and care. Significant cooperation between social care and health teams is required. Although perhaps now on the horizon, a fully streamlined digital era has not yet arrived in this practice sector, and there are considerable challenges with information sharing across multiple systems and organisations.
In reaction to these challenges, CoramBAAF outlined clear goals when designing the new forms:
- Develop documents that can be integrated by organisations into their electronic record systems.
- Enable clinicians to provide child-led appointments and complete individualised health plans.
- Ensure comprehensive health histories are collated. This must be done by the practitioners and their support teams so that children are not expected to repeat their story.
- Allow health planning to be a continuous process and not a one-off health check.
The guidance published alongside the updated forms encourages health and social care professionals to rethink some parts of the process, whilst remaining within the confines of current statutory guidance and regulations.
Listening to the voices of children and young people
Care experienced children and young people have provided suggestions and feedback about their experience of health assessments, in various surveys, audits, and events. These messages were collected by CoramBAAF in a literature review which informed the development of the RCPCH quality standards for initial health assessments as well as our updated forms. To summarise the findings, children and young people reported that they wanted to understand more about the purpose and benefits of health assessments, and wanted more control. The word assessment was not popular with young people and therefore CoramBAAF suggests that consultations should be referred to as health appointments rather than assessments. Additionally, children and young people appreciated approachable clinicians who have a sense of humour and are caring.
Various health teams around the UK have responded to these messages, developing digital and pictorial tools to encourage more child-led appointments. CoramBAAF is very grateful to these teams who have shared their promising practice and experiences, and many of their ideas have influenced the design of the updated forms.
We appreciate that it will take time for health and social care partners to explore these new forms and resources. We will provide online Q&A sessions to assist practitioners.
Accessing the forms
For those with a forms licence/social care professionals
From 8 October onwards, the updated Child Health assessment forms (2025) will appear in your download files replacing the Child Health Suite (2018), which will no longer be available. Social care teams will need to liaise with health partners and agree timescales for implementation of use of the new forms. If your organisation has the relevant forms licence, a member of our team has been in touch with your designated forms contact to share the new forms.
For health practitioners working in NHS or HSCNI organisations
To reduce administrative burden for health and social care teams we have developed an additional direct method for accessing your forms. Submit your application - if you meet the criteria you will be contacted with an access link and password.
Do you have any queries?
We recommend you take a look at our 'Frequently asked questions’. If you can’t find your answer, and your question is a practical one about forms access and/or licence agreements, please get in touch.
If you have a specific question about a practice matter that you need support with, you can contact our Member Advice Line.
Ellie Johnson, Health Consultant, CoramBAAF.